[timr]

I've been saying for a while now that "self-driving" is the 2016 equivalent of flying cars.

It's not that I think the technology won't happen -- it's clearly on the way -- I just think it's far more likely to happen as incremental advancements to existing auto technology (e.g. "lane assist", "self parking", etc.), while all of the various regulatory and societal problems sort themselves out. It's already becoming clear that the major automakers are deploying bits and pieces of self-driving tech faster than Google is getting to the glorious, all-robot future.

When you stop to think about all of the things that would have to change in our society to make a "sudden" transition to robot cars (of which the unemployment of a huge number of people is just one factor), it seems wildly implausible, even on a ten-year timeframe. We'll probably go through decades of refinement and expansion of car automation features before the first truly driverless cars roll off the assembly line.

[arcticfox]

But the technology for "flying cars" never arrived. It would be totally economically unfeasible to have mass market flying cars (helicopters, I guess?) today.

On the other hand, even you admit that "self-driving" tech is already being deployed one way or another.

So I don't think they're particularly comparable.